I live in Vancouver, Canada...driving is terrible here as well for different reasons though...one of my pet peeves is driving on a left lane slowly...another stopping at the intersection to make a visual contact with another driver to decide who should go first (regardless of what the signs say)...therefore I prefer to bike and use public transportation

... "freedom and ownership" are key to why people buy vehicles. Otherwise why would motorcycles even be allowed on the road?

Exactly. And yet, the way I see self-driving cars is that fully autonomous cars are not necessarily for individual consumptions, but more suited for a community ownership, so that people can be carried from one place to another -- much like the public transportation offers us services.

If my assumptin is correct (of course, I could be totally off-bsse here), people will have less pleasure in driving their own cars. Rather than driving their own cars as the way they want to drive, a self-driving car dictates your driving behavior and it could rob your pleasure.

"We seem to have lost the way to reach out to one another." I think the avenues of communication are doing fine - this forum is proof, and more than ever.

"The automotive industry is underestimating the driver's emotional attachment to "freedom" and "ownership.""

Two takes:

One: Frankly, I was rather surprised to see the Euopean numbers on this. I fully expected that people who are more acclimated to public transportation would be more receptive to automated driving. But I was happy to see it.

Take two: I can understand this forums interest - we'd be designing the stuff, but it intregues me, what's driving this question in the first place? (No pun intended.) Because I think that automobile marketers have always know full well, and have literally banked on the fact, that "freedom and ownership" are key to why people buy vehicles. Otherwise why would motorcycles even be allowed on the road?

If someone were to ask me what kind of rat I smell it would be that I suspect that someone in one of those un-Godly departments of government that make Jim Williams batty, or a like minded person/group now firmly infecting the automobile industry, is trying to find out how much public push back they're going to get when they forcibly implement, or are forced to implement, something that takes away the afformentioned freedom and ownership, like OBD-III.